All posts tagged: seafood

Miso Glazed Salmon Tray Bake

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If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a bit obsessed with salmon. This beautiful Miso Glazed Salmon Tray Bake is an easy salmon recipe for spring. My recipe serves 4 but is easy to adapt to 1 or 6 portions if needed. Miso Glazed Salmon Tray Bake 15 mins prep | 45 mins cookDifficulty: Easy | Serves 4 INGREDIENTS2 Tbsp white miso paste2 Tbsp sake1 Tbsp brown sugar1 Tbsp soy sauce4 salmon fillets (120g to 180g each)500 grams new potatoes, halved2 red onions, cut into wedges1 large capsicum, deseeded and cut into thick strips1 Tbsp dried thyme3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oilSalt and pepper3 courgettes, cut into thick rounds1 bunch asparagus, woody ends removed1 Tbsp sesame seeds1 spring onion, thinly sliced PREPARATION This recipe was created for Borges.

Crispy Prawn and Mango Bao with Chilli Mayo

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These crispy prawn and mango bao with chilli mayo are light and bright. This recipe makes 8 stuffed bao which could feed 4 hungry people or 8 people if serving with sides. Use large peeled prawn cutlets. Frozen bao are steamed to fluffy perfection. Find these in the frozen aisle at your local supermarket. Crispy Prawn and Mango Bao with Chilli Mayo 15 mins prep | 15 mins cookDifficulty: Easy | Makes 8 INGREDIENTS1/2 cup mayonnaise2 Tbsp chilli sauce1 cup plain flour1 Tbsp paprika1 Tbsp celery seeds1 Tbsp mixed herbs1 tsp salt2 egg whites16 prawn cutlets, tails removed1L vegetable oil for frying8 frozen bao1 mango, sliced1 cup cucumber slices1/4 red onion, thinly sliced1 spring onion, thinly sliced2 Tbsp toasted sesame seeds1 red chilli, thinly sliced PREPARATION1. In a small bowl or jar, mix together the mayonnaise and chilli sauce. Reserve.2. In a large bowl, add flour, paprika, celery seeds, mixed herbs, and salt. Stir in 2 tablespoons of water into the flour for extra crunchy bits. Reserve.3. In a medium bowl, separate 2 egg whites, …

Chorizo Cheese and Herb Baked Mussels

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These stuffed mussels are a delicious snack to serve over drinks or add bread and a green salad to transform these into an easy dinner. This recipe makes 1 kg mussels but feel free to double or triple depending on how many mouths you want to feed. Chorizo Cheese and Herb Baked Mussels 15 mins prep | 20 mins cookDifficulty: Easy | Serves 2 for dinner or 4 for a starter INGREDIENTS1kg green lipped mussels2 cups grated cheese1 cup marinara sauceA bunch of fresh herbs, chopped2 chorizo, cut in half lengthwise and then sliced into half moons½ cup panko bread crumbsBlack pepperExtra Virgin Olive Oil PREPARATION This recipe was create for Borges.

One thing I would absolutely eat again and one thing I would not.

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I just spent three and a half weeks in the Philippines. I ate balut on the first day. It was completely unplanned. I promise. Yeah, OK, it was on my list of things to eat. Way, waaay down, at the bottom. Past lechon (pig on a spit), adobo (chicken or pork vinegar soy stew), sisig (sizzling chopped pigs head and chicken liver), arroz caldo (chicken rice soup), kare kare (peanut sauce stew). Even past dinuguan (that’s pork blood stew if you were wondering). Like, if we seriously ran of things to do, I *might* eat a duck fetus for shits and giggles. But that is not what happened.  We arrived in Mactan on a Friday morning and met up with our dear old friend Adam. We started on the local beers fairly early in the day and later enjoyed a jolly dinner with his Mactan crew. There was local BBQ (marinated meat on sticks) tacos and of course, local beer. The subject of balut was brought up I mentioned I was interested in trying it…at …

“Shrimp grits” Congee

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“Shrimp grits” congee 15 mins prep  |  45 mins cook Difficulty: Easy  | Serves 4 Ingredients 1 cup long grain rice, washed 3L water or stock 2 tablespoons butter 400g peeled prawns 5 cloves garlic, chopped 2 tomatoes, sliced A thumb size piece of ginger, cut into batons 1 spring onion, thinly sliced Optional: hot sauce Garnish: chopped coriander Preparation Place rice and water in a saucepan and bring to boil. Turn down to medium and partially cover with lid so that steam can escape and it doesn’t boil over. Cook for 30-45 minutes until the consistency of porridge. Stir every now and again to prevent grains sticking to the bottom of the pot. Add more water if the porridge is looking too thick. The congee is done when you can see that the individual rice grains have broken down into soft flakes. Season with salt to your taste, remove from heat and divide into serving bowls. While the congee is cooking, make the topping. Melt butter in a frying pan. Add the prawns, garlic, …

Prawn sushi bowls

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Avocados are back in season, baby. It’s time to GORGE. This recipe features my current favourite way to eat avocado: Cut in half, flesh scooped out. Topped with a dollop of mayo, a rosette of pickled ginger and a sprinkling of black and white sesame seeds. Measurements below are rough. Tweak to your own taste, appetite and preferences. I’ve made a quick sushi vinegar rice but you can totally use plain rice, brown rice or black rice. Prawn sushi bowls 15 mins prep  |  30 mins cook Difficulty: Easy  | Serves 2 Ingredients 1 cup raw peeled prawns 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups cooked sushi rice 4 tablespoons rice vinegar 2 teaspoons sugar 1 perfectly ripe avocado 2 tablespoons mayonnaise Pickled ginger* Black and white sesame seeds 2 to 3 cups fresh vegetables, sliced, diced or cut into batons Vegetables: radish, capsicum (bell pepper), carrot, red onion, shelled edamame beans, cucumber, daikon, bean sprouts, tomato, cabbage. Sliced spring onion for garnish. 2 tablespoon sushi/sashimi soy sauce with sliced chilli (optional) Preparation Bring a saucepan of …

Bluff oysters and Red Red Mignonette

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Bluff oyster season kicked off last week and so far, I’ve scoffed 3 dozen. Oysters can be an acquired taste but I have the taste for oysters in my genes. I can’t remember a time I didn’t love them, though I didn’t grow up on Bluffies. If you’re not an oyster fan, I wouldn’t recommend starting with raw oysters and certainly not with Bluffies. They are truely for the oyster connoisseur. The season is March to August and fans go a little crazy for the season. Bluff oysters can be identified by their flat saucer shape and their creamy warm grey colouring. They’re less “frilly” than their black and white Pacific cousins. My very first bluff oyster was at a design event a few years ago, the oysters were free and shucked to order. Being a design event rather than a food event, there was no one queuing up for oysters. Not one to turn down free oysters, I kept eating as long as they were shucking. This was the first time buying oysters in a …

Thai coconut mussel and kumara chowder

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This post was made possible thanks to Trident. To win a year’s supply of Trident products including their popular chilli sauces, noodles, coconut cream and milk, upload a photo of your own sweet chilli creation to their Facebook page here. Need a recipe to inspire you? Read on… Back when I was a poor uni student, I indulged in mussels as a culinary upgrade from instant noodles. I would steam a kilo of mussels in a pot, add a little sweet chill sauce and coconut cream and serve with bread to mop up the juices. It was a treat. Delicious. Affordable. Minimal effort. Sweet chilli sauce goes so well with mussels and ever since, I’ve kept sweet chilli sauce on hand as a pantry staple. NZ green-lipped mussels are giant compared to other mussels. Some are as large as my hand…though I admit, I have quite small hands. Because they are so big, they have enough strength to hold tightly to their beards making them hard to pull out. My hack is to remove the …

Poké face

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Poké (pronounced “po–kay”) landed in Auckland last September in the tired underground IMAX food court on Queen Street. My fork buddy and I hit up Poke Time on opening day: bright and little tacky, as Hawaiian-themed things can be, the experience has a Subway vibe and is essentially a build-your-own raw fish salad bowl. You pick whatever you want, although it can be too many decisions for the uninitiated. If you’ve never tried poké before, it can be overwhelming but if you know what you are doing, Poke Time is great value. With heaps of options including salmon, two types of tuna, and trevally, they also have token vegetarian options, but that’s probably not what most will come here for. Tip: go for the seasoned fish, the non-marinated options are essentially sashimi bowls, rather than poké bowls. Poké means “chop” and is a Hawaiian dish influenced by Japanese cuisine. Poké is raw fish (such as tuna, salmon or octopus) is cubed and seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, seaweed. Poké is often served served with fresh vegetables and rice …

Te Matuku Oyster Festival and a deep fried oyster recipe

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The Koala and I had the pleasure of attending the Te Matuku Oysters on Waiheke on Saturday thanks to Jenny’s Tamarind Chutney and Te Matuku Oysters. Our first festival of any kind since last summer, the weather held up – aside from a couple of light showers, it felt like summer. Waiheke is an island just a 35 minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland with loads of pristine beaches, a warm Mediterranean micro-climate and a focus on growing quality food and wine. We started with a delightful pilsner from Albi Brewing Company and a complimentary 3 oysters each. We were in oyster heaven and gobbled up more than our share and at festival special prices, it didn’t hurt the wallet one bit. If you love oysters the festival is time to gorge yourself on fresh, plump oysters. If your preference is natural with a squeeze of lemon (or Worcestershire sauce or vinaigrette), then shucked oysters are just $20 per dozen. To give you an idea of market price, a local restaurant sells the same oysters at $48 per dozen. …

Learning to shuck oysters and a recipe for Oysters Tamarind Kilpatrick

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From my father, I inherited a fierce love for fresh oysters. If there was ever a moment I didn’t love raw oysters, I don’t remember it. As a kid, I ate my weight in oysters and any buffet worth visiting had fresh oysters in it’s offerings. Those in our family who loved them would eat a plate piled high. As a young adult, I once (or twice) turned up to family gatherings armed with several dozen shucked oysters on a polystyrene box, knowing they would go down a treat. Oysters are cheaper and fresher if you shuck them yourself but I’d never shucked oysters before. I vaguely remember my uncle wrestling with oysters but that didn’t interest me as a kid – I just wanted to eat them. In anticipation of the Te Matuku Oyster Festival on Waiheke this Saturday, I had the opportunity to shuck and cook up some plump Waiheke oysters. I’m no pro yet, so I won’t be sharing any shucking tips but I watched a bunch of Youtube videos (including this …

Valentine’s Day Aphrodisiacs

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Food bloggers’ potluck On Wednesday night, four food bloggers gathered for a delicious potluck. The theme was Valentine’s Day and aphrodisiacs had been thrown about in discussion. If you have a mind anywhere near the gutter, the dishes present all had sexy connotations. I recently saw a close up of a mussel on Instagram which could have been R18 and probably redefines the term “food porn”. So I brought my current potluck go to: baked mayo-cheese mussels. I’ve never travelled with these mussels so my heart and mussels jumped every time my Uber hit a bump or turned a sharp corner. The mussels went sliding around in their tray, possessed. Luckily none escaped the plastic wrap and the topping stayed on. As well as mussels, there were fresh oysters, satay sticks with greens, herbs and sauce by Carli from The Enthusiastic Cook, stuffed pasta shells with both smoked fish and a fascinating beet, beef and chocolate version by our host Maddy at Madicattt. Dessert was peach pie with dollops of cream by Bri from The Market. Kindred spirits understand that cameras eat first! As per our …

Auckland Seafood Festival 2016

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If you enjoy sensational, succulent seafood, then make sure you visit Auckland Seafood Festival this long weekend. My sister and I hit Auckland Seafood Festival on opening night and we had a truly delightful time.  We both love seafood so we shared a bunch of things we both enjoy. Arriving shortly after opening, there were no queues so we didn’t have to apply any strategy based on length of the queues. Last year I gave crayfish a miss because the lines were horrendous. Nothing like that this time around. We started with oysters and the Bluff farmed oysters at Sanford Oysters looked good to us. These were freshly shucked and served with malt vinegar and lemon (6 for $22). We had a little browse and then hit up Besos Latinos for some Peruvian ceviche ($14) and seafood empanadas ($10). The ceviche really hit the spot and the empanada (fried fresh to order) reminded us of a seafood pie.   Always popular at Auckland Seafood Festival are Auckland Fish Markets’ crayfish tails. This year they had grilled half cray tails …

Auckland Seafood Festival 2016 – double pass giveaway

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2016 has started with a bang. Like just about everyone else, I have some dietary intentions for the year. I was feeling like were were eating too much red meat last year, but instead of saying, “I will eat less red meat” I’ve been saying, “I will eat more seafood”. The thinking is different, the end result is the same. So far in 2016, I have eaten yakitori scallops, whole grilled squid, salt pepper squid, herb-crusted pan-fried salmon, bagel with lox, yakitori salmon, mayo-cheese mussels, prawn pasta, Vietnamese pancake with pork and prawn, prawn fried rice, prawn and fish butter curry, fish tacos and a fish burger. Not bad considering we’re only 15 days in. Here’s to 2016 being a seafood-fuelled year and hopefully I’ll will cook or eat a seafood dish that I’ve never cooked or eaten before. With Auckland anniversary coming up, we can look forward to even more seafood at Auckland Seafood Festival. Running 5 sessions over 4 days at Halsey Wharf which is downtown between the Viaduct and North Wharf. Thanks to …

Baked Mayo-Cheese Mussels

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We dined with friends at a local yakitori restaurant last week. Although one of our favourite restaurants in Auckland for their tasty morsels of individually selected skewers, it had been a long time since we had visited and it wasn’t quite the same. My favourite dish, scallops wrapped in bacon were disappointing this time and the other dish I was looking forward to (chicken hearts) was unavailable. They did however, have a special on the blackboard: 4 mussels for $5. These were baked, cheesy, creamy, a little sweet and very different to how I usually cook mussels (steamed with sauce added). I don’t know exactly what was in the dish but I figured there was mussels, cheese, mayo and perhaps something sweet for balance. Boom I wanted more. The Koala and I split a portion and 2 mussels each is just a tease. So when our Foodbox delivered a kilo of mussels yesterday, I took it as a sign from the universe that I should try and recreate it at home. This recipe is deceptively easy, very quick, and uses just …

Diving into fish tacos

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  Warning: May contain innuendos. I love fish tacos. I dream of staying near the coast in Mexico and gorging on fresh fish tacos every day. We’ve enjoyed tacos at home a few times, specifically pulled pork tacos so when we received some lovely fillets from our delivery last week, I figured it was time to explore the fish taco at home. I’d never made them before, but it seemed pretty straightforward to me. I just made up the process as I went along. The perfect fish taco has a good balance of fish, salad and condiments. I hate a dry taco. Saucy tacos FTW! My preference is soft shell tacos, specifically corn tortillas. I first tried Tio Pablo’s corn tortillas last year when I was going through a gluten free phase, but turns out, I prefer the flavour of corn tortillas over flour tortillas. I used tarakihi fillets, but any medium white fish will do. Snapper, red gurnard, or trevally would also be suitable. Other types of fish such as flounder, turbot or salmon would probably be amazing. Feel free …

Yakitori-Style Scallops and Bacon

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    Warning: Food in this post may cause incoherant babbling and sighs/moans of agreement. Scallops wrapped in bacon make me weak in the knees. I always order them if I see them in a Japanese restaurant and The Koala is a big fan of them too. The ingredients are a bit expensive, but making them at home is far cheaper than eating them at a restaurant and you’ll probably get much more. Fresh vs. Frozen It’s no longer scallops season here, but not long ago my seafood guy was peddling some fat scallops from Nelson. Although they were frozen, I thought I’d give them a spin. While fresh scallops are always better, frozen scallops are better than none at all. If using frozen scallops, defrost overnight in the fridge and make sure you drain them very well because a lot of liquid will appear on thawing. Never thaw scallops in water as this affects the texture and flavour. I think I was supposed to receive a dozen scallops, but I actually got 14 scallops. I took …

Favourite Seafood Recipes

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Summer in New Zealand is all about gorging on simply prepared seafood. This summer has been particularly seafood filled. Here is a collection of five my favourite seafood recipes. Just click on the images to view the recipes. Enjoy!   1. Steamed Garlic Prawns Super easy recipe for Steamed Garlic Prawns, a very popular dish at Kingsland’s Canton Cafe. Includes a handy guide to prawn sizing in New Zealand.   2. Pan Fried Flounder The most popular recipe on my blog by miles, this buttery golden pan fried flounder makes use of a whole flounder. You’ll need a flounder (or two) butter, more butter, flour, salt and pepper. 3. Raw Fish Salad I fell in love with Ika Mata (raw fish salad) in Rarotonga. Here’s my version of it using fresh tuna fillets, though you can also use any firm white fish. 4. Oysters Kilpatrick Oysters Kilpatrick are an easy crowd pleaser. Oystes, bacon, tasty sauce and cheese. What could go wrong? 5. All-in-one Seafood Stew I test out Adie McClelland’s all-in-one seafood stew from her …

Auckland Seafood Festival 2015 – food porn and review

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My seafood gobbling friends and I descended on the Auckland Seafood Festival at midday today with hunger in our bellies and a readiness to partake. Being the middle of Auckland Anniversary weekend, the city was BUSY. There was plenty of atmosphere and things to do. There still are. The layout of the venue at Halsey Wharf was quite different this year and the areas felt a little less marked out. No restaurant alley this year, but it was easy to navigate. There was plenty of seating, though the limited shade was snapped up quickly. The lines were short all except for the line for the Oceanz’s crayfish (from $25 for half) which was so long (about 40 bellies deep) we didn’t bother. My favourite dish was one from NSIA a school for hospo students. Pulpo in honey and balsamic, gazpacho caviar, Spanish olive soil, capsicum sofrito ($8). Pulpo is spanish for octopus and this dish was filled with bite size octopi. Quite an adventurous and sophisticated dish, it really paid off. We also tried their …

Auckland Seafood Festival 2015: Double pass giveaway – COMPETITION CLOSED

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OoooOOhhhh yes! Another giveaway! Such is the festive season. I love giving stuff away, don’t you? Thanks to Auckland Seafood Festival, I’ve got a double pass to give away to next year’s festival in late January. To enter, fill in the form at the bottom of this post, including a skill question. I’ve been to  Auckland Seafood Festival many times and if you love seafood, it’s a great day out. It’s kid-friendly and adult-friendly and a great way to try lots of different seafood in quick succession. You can expect to find: scallops oysters scampi mussels eel fish crayfish octopus squid sea cucumber turbo shells prawns and prawn killers kina (sea urchin) Some of these seafoods are uncommon so this a great chance to tick them off your foodie bucket list. If you’re a blogger and you eat some weirdo things, please share them with Our Growing Edge! Pro tip: don’t attempt raw kina on a hangover. I did it once, not my finest moment. Who knew that raw/live sea urchins isn’t an ideal breakfast food on a queasy stomach? …